We all at some point must have had the need of scanning a document at home or on the go. I don’t think it’s everybody that can afford the luxury of a scanner at home. You probably will be searching for a local business center or a cyber cafe where you can do that, or you’ll think of getting yourself a scanning machine. Well, if you have a Smartphone now, you won’t have much to worry about; you can use your Android phone as a scanner.
The scanner apps on these android devices make use of OCR (Optical Character Recognition). It is the mechanical or electronic conversion of images of typed, handwritten or printed text into machine-encoded text, whether from a scanned document or photo of a document. With OCR you can be able to copy or manipulate text from the scanned document.
You might be wondering why you should go for these apps instead of taking a photo of the document with your Android phone’s camera. Here is the deal, if you use your ordinary camera app for scanning, the image will be in a image formats only ; you won’t be offered the OCR feature, as you won’t be able to copy text from your scanned document and you won’t as well have the ability to save the document to PDF file.
Best Scanning Apps for Android phone
Below are a list and description of three apps that will come in handy when trying to scan documents with your Android Smartphone.
Read Also: How To Print Documents Using Phones
1. GOOGLE DRIVE
Google Drive is a file storage and synchronization service developed by Google and launched on April 24, 2012. It gives users the access to synchronize most files across devices, it store files in the cloud, edit documents, and share files spreadsheets, and presentations with collaborators.
Google Drive give your Android phone the ability to take photos of receipts and documents, save it in a PDF format. It also allows you to use Google services to perform OCR on it. In essence, you can simply take a picture of a receipt or document, then on your Google Drive account, search its contents. Google Drive can be downloaded from the play store and Apple’s App Store though it is always preloaded on many Android phones.
How can I scan with this app?
It’s simple, just select Add New > Scan from within Google Drive, now follow the remaining steps. it’s not rocket science. You visit Google drive website here.
Read Also: How to Run Google Drive Multiple Instances on Windows
2. Evernote
Evernote is a cross-platform app designed for your smartphone and computer that stores most things you think you can losing track of, like a quick note, receipt, article you want to read, to do list, or even a simple typed note. The app works brilliantly, keeping everything in sync with your computer, smartphone, or tablet.
Just like the Google Drive app, Evernote also gives you the ability to take photos of receipts or any document and save them in PDF format. You can search for all OCR content from within your Evernote account.
How can I do this?
Click on the + button in the top right corner from within your app, and then select Page Camera. When the camera pops up, you can then use it to scan one or more documents on the go.
3. Scan to PDF
The Scan to PDF is a lightweight scanner for your Android smartphone. It doesn’t give you the OCR feature as the other two mentioned above, but you will be able to quickly convert images taken with the app into a PDF file that is stored on your device. Not as pretty and cool as the others but it can serve in some cases.
What’s your take on this? Is using your android device as a scanning machine worth it, or you still prefer the big computer scanner with will take a whole lot of space in your room. I don’t think anybody will go for the latter. If you have space and money to buy one, maybe you can do so.
Are there other ways one can use their Android device as scanners? Please do let us know using the comment box below. Endeavor to share the guide to friends.
